Most studies of the re-entry of women into the labour market focus on the impact of individual characteristics as well as on the role of partnership and regional childcare opportunities. Even though Germans typically and for their entire career stick with the type of job that they originally train for, the importance of a woman’s education or job training are typically not taken into account for predicting the duration of leave from the labor market, such as being unemployed and/ or a house wives. We address this lack of research by analyzing the influence of different job characteristics on the duration of leave. Our research is theoretically based on the actor-centered institutionalism by Scharpf (2000). We used the German micro-census data for the year of 2006, from which we identified 111 different occupations along with their conditions and requirements. These data allowed us to examine the impact of occupations on the extension or reducing of leave. Our results indicate that every occupation implies a set of preconditions which affect women in different ways in the duration of their career breaks. The observed effect of occupations depends on the specific characteristics of the last occupation that the women had. We found out that working rather long hours (46 or more per week, e.g. for hairdressers) at the last job increases the duration of career breaks. The same result occurs for monotonous, heteronomous, and physically demanding jobs such as chefs. The opposite effect seems to be in place for occupations which imply work on Sundays and public holidays, e.g. waiters. These jobs allow for flexible and self-determined work schedules and tend to lead to in shorter leave.